Al Harrington was digging through a bag of turkey sandwiches when the fight broke out.

Like so many of the disputes that erupt on the streets of Montreal, its origins were unclear. It could have been a simple exchange of insults that snowballed, an old score that needed settling or perhaps just a textbook case of revenge.

Regardless of how it began, one woman was intent on keeping it alive. She lunged at a middle-age man, swinging a wild right hook toward his face. The punch glanced his arm.

Before things could escalate further, Harrington placed himself between the combatants and offered the woman a sandwich.

The woman’s voice cracked and her eyes welled. The conflict had fizzled without anyone landing a blow or calling the police.

Moments like this are a win for Harrington, the woman, the police and the people walking Atwater Ave. on a rainy Friday night in February.

A homeless man named Angel gets a visit from volunteer members of the Wolf Pack on the street in downtown Montreal, March 8, 2018. Christinne Muschi /
MONTREAL GAZETTE

Three nights a week, Harrington leads a group of volunteers on a 36-block walk from Atwater Ave. to Berri St: handing out food and blankets to the homeless along the way but also just being there for anyone in need.

They call themselves the Wolf Pack Street Patrol. Harrington, a former outreach worker with the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal, created the group last month to help make the streets safer for those who live in the margins and struggle with addiction or mental-health problems.

Indigenous women, in particular, are vulnerable to violence and police crackdowns in the swath of highrise apartments and motels just west of downtown, according to four street workers interviewed by the Montreal Gazette.

“There’s a huge need for this here,” says Harrington, who used to do a night patrol with the Friendship Centre. “The night can be dangerous if you’re sleeping out here alone. We just want to be the eyes and ears of the community. We want people to know we’re there for them.”

Last summer, a 27-year-old Inuk woman was found hanged to death in an alley just a few blocks east of Atwater Ave. The woman, Siasi Tullaugak, was a sex worker who had last been seen in the company of a pimp with a history of violence against Indigenous women.

Police are investigating whether Tullaugak took her own life or was murdered.

Tullaugak came to Montreal from the North in hopes of finding a better life. Instead, she was consumed by a world where pimps and drug dealers prey on young women.

A Cree woman told the Montreal Gazette she was almost raped on the first night she slept under an overpass in Montreal. She fought her assailant off but he rained down punches and kicks until she had to be hospitalized.

David Chapman, who runs a homeless shelter in the neighbourhood, says 10 Indigenous women have reported instances of sexual assault to him over the past year.

“People out there are extremely vulnerable and our police and our institutions need to do more to help them,” he said.

While the city struggles to respond to this public safety crisis, Harrington and his group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous volunteers have taken matters into their own hands. Harrington, an Ojibwe who grew up in foster care, says it’s his way of “paying it forward.”

He says it’s easy for him to relate to people on the streets because, not so long ago, he was in their shoes.

“I was on the streets, too, and I had someone reach out and pull me up back then,” he says. “Back when I lived in Thunder Bay, my sister kicked me out of our home in the middle of winter. I spent the next two weeks on the streets and boy did it wake me up.”

On his first night sleeping on a cot at the Salvation Army, someone warned Harrington that he should sleep with his winter boots on.

“I said, ‘No way,’ and when I woke up the next day my boots were gone,” he says. “Well, after that, I looked pretty silly walking around Thunder Bay in an old pair of sneakers.”

Because he was adopted out of Ojibwe territory at such a young age, Harrington didn’t get to connect with his Indigenous roots until later in life. Many of the people he runs into on the streets of Montreal share that same history.

Some grew up in white families that taught them to resent their Indigenous heritage and culture. Others wound up in the foster care system, bouncing from one abusive home to the next until they wound up simply as wards of the state.

“A lot of us are still trying to figure out who we are, to find our way home,” says Harrington. “For some of us, that path is easier than others. For some, it’s a path that leads through addiction and abuse.”

Annie Roussy-Ste-Croix volunteers with the patrol whenever she can. An 18-year-old Inuk, she spent her youth in group homes and only re-connected with her father three years ago.

Her dad spent years on the street and Roussy-Ste-Croix’s mother died when she was a child. But Roussy-Ste-Croix says she’s bonded with some of her cousins, aunts and uncles in Montreal.

“Some of them are on the streets but I still feel connected to them, I still feel accepted by them,” Roussy-Ste-Croix says. “It feels like I’m part of something good out here.”

When the fight broke out that night, Roussy-Ste-Croix stepped up to help diffuse the situation. Earlier, she’d held an elder in her arms as the woman wept and confided in the teen.

The elder, who’d been attacked earlier in the evening, is Roussy-Ste-Croix’s biological grandmother.

“It hurts seeing family abused, especially since I had to go through that,” Roussy-Ste-Croix says. “I know how it feels to be down in the dumps and discouraged. I don’t like seeing people hurting so I try my best to help them because I’ve been there.”

Much like the Bear Clan Patrol that emerged in Winnipeg — Harrington says his group was founded on the Indigenous philosophy that it is the community’s responsibility to care for its most vulnerable. At night, the only real frontline workers most homeless people see are police officers.

And while Harrington says many officers do good work, it’s easier to diffuse a bad situation when people see a familiar face.

The long-term goal, for Harrington, is to have a patrol out every night of the week and running all year round. He knows that will require massive fundraising and could take months (if not years) to achieve.

“For now, we’ll just get through tonight and think about the next patrol,” Harrington says. “We’re going to keep coming back, training volunteers and being here for people. Whatever it takes, we’ll do it.”

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